The annual Empire Asparagus Festival, which will be held on Saturday, June 3, invites entries for both its popular recipe and poetry contests. Click here to learn more about submitting your asparagus recipe or poem.
Leland local Rebecca Reynolds and co-director McAdoo Greer will bring their dramatic spoof “Breathing Space” to Leland’s Old Art Building stage for three hilarious shows June 16-18. Opening night is sold out, but tickets are still available for the latter two performances. The play is set in an upscale lakeside village populated by the one percent and features an all-star cast of local and national, professional actors.
French-American artist Alyssa Smith display’s her work in two iconic Leelanau County locations—Farm Club and The Mill in Glen Arbor. Three ceramic pieces from her work “A Hundred Ways to Kiss the Ground” are currently at Farm Club. Her “found object” piece “Buckets” is on display at The Mill in Glen Arbor. “Alyssa instantly had the concept for “Buckets” on her first walk through The Mill, and I could not love this piece more,” said Kelsey Duda, creative director of Fernhaus Studio and The Mill. “I would never have thought of combining the pieces together the way she did, transforming artifacts into a work of art.”
Writer Tim Mulherin, who splits his time between Indianapolis and Leelanau County, shares his “big fish” story, when conservation officers with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources weighed in his brown trout at 7.8 pounds and rainbow trout at 4.5 pounds.
Coffee with the Authors is a live, conversational interview with local and regional authors about the writing craft and process. The series kicks off Saturday, May 27, at 11 am at the Glen Arbor Arts Center. Traverse City Record-Eagle journalist, essayist, and author Mardi Jo Link will talk about memoir writing with GAAC gallery manager Sarah Bearup-Neal.
Bekah TenBrink’s dream of building an after-school program for Leelanau teens continues to grow. LIFT Teen Center has expanded from the Suttons Bay area into Suttons Bay and Northport schools, with Leland on the brink. TenBrink said discussions continue about adding other county schools. “We hope to be at every single school in Leelanau County,” she said. LIFT has helped chaperone field trips, work with the school’s Career Day and college visits, and other special events, such as rock climbing at the Elevate climbing gym in Traverse City. “We fill in the gaps,” TenBrink said.
Marquette artist JoAnn Deuel Shelby will use her Glen Arbor Arts Center residency to document Leelanau County plant biomes—their biological communities—and then contrast them with those native to the Upper Peninsula. Shelby’s investigations will be used to create eco-printed papers and fabrics that allow her to interpret and illustrate changes in climate. Shelby will talk about her project during a public presentation on Friday, May 26, at noon at the Arts Center. The presentation is free.
The fourth annual Glen Arbor Cemetery Memorial Ceremony, commemorating the nearly lost site, will be held at 10 am on Friday, May 26. John Sawyer of Traverse City will deliver a eulogy detailing the life of one of the four Civil War veterans buried at the cemetery, James Lawrence Green. And on Wednesday, May 24, the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire will host a presentation about the history of the Glen Arbor Township Cemetery, which served the Glen Lake area from 1880-1927, and the renewed effort to reclaim this long-neglected resting place. Last week, ground penetrating radar revealed an additional mass grave of more than 50 bodies buried at the cemetery sometime between the late 1800s and early 1900s. This cemetery in the woods off Forest Haven Road, west of downtown Glen Arbor, was nearly lost to history before Glen Arbor Township regained control over it from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore after the big storm of August 2015. Click on the story to watch a narrated video tour of the cemetery.
Tick bites and cases of tick-borne illnesses such as Lyme Disease and Anaplasmosis are increasing in northern Michigan, according to statistics from the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department and confirmed by local doctors and staff within the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Leelanau County registered 14 cases of tick-born illness last year, more than doubling the previous year’s tally. Beyond statistics, the upward trend has proven tragic for this community. Glen Arbor lost popular realtor and ski coach John Peppler to a tick-born disease last August. National Lakeshore superintendent Scott Tucker said that one Park employee nearly died last year of Anaplasmosis caused by a tick bite that happened at a Sleeping Bear campground.
At the end of every school year, Interlochen Arts Academy hosts a festival commemorating the hard work and talent demonstrated by their student body. This celebration includes Morp, the palindrome that the students and faculty affectionately call their prom, multiple performances around campus, all of which are open to the public, and to wrap up the year, commencement. The festival, which runs May 24-27, is the long-awaited crescendo of a successful school year, and it features several Leelanau County students currently attending the academy.